Someone on our side

UNITElive spoke yesterday (April 14) with Cardiff mum  Jo Stevens, a prospective parliamentary candidate for Labour in Cardiff Central. Jo was hitting the campaign trail in Wales with Unite general secretary Len McCluskey, Unite Welsh secretary Andy Richards and shadow secretary for Wales Owen Smith MP.

In a political climate in which almost one in five MPs cite their pre-parliamentary occupations as “politician” – a 50 per cent increase since 1997 – Stevens is no political careerist. She’s spent her entire life fighting for trade unionists and for people who have been injured and mistreated at work, currently in her position as a solicitor for Thompsons, one of Unite’s law firms.

“I’m a 48-year-old mother of two teenage boys,” she explains, “and I’ve lived in Cardiff for over 25 years.”

It’s through this personal background as a mother of two, champion of working people, and resident deeply knowledgeable about local concerns, that Stevens finds her rationale for standing for election.

Low pay

“Here in Cardiff Central, we’ve got a city centre that’s full of shops, cafes and hospitality,” said Stevens. “But we’ve got a real problem with low pay, insecure jobs – people on zero hours contracts, people struggling to get secure employment with decent wages.

“And that leads to all sorts of other inequalities like housing problems, health problems, educational attainment, debt and family breakdown,” she added. “A low-pay, low-skill economy doesn’t work here and doesn’t work across the rest of Wales.

“We need to get wages up; we need to get people into secure employment. We need to get people on the Living Wage, so they can spend money and pay taxes, and so put money into our public services.”

Stevens urged Unite members everywhere to vote for the party that represents their interests.

“Unite members in Wales and across the UK should vote Labour if they want to see the rights of working people strengthened and good public services, including a good NHS, good schools and good hospitals,” she said. “If they want better secure employment, better terms and conditions and better pay – then a Labour government is the only one that can deliver this.”

Unite general secretary Len McCluskey called Stevens “a real fighter for the ordinary working person.”

“That’s all that working people want – someone to be on their side,” he said. “I can tell the people of Cardiff Central that when you send Jo to Westminster, she’ll be there fighting with every sinew of her body for ordinary working people.”